Searching for jobs online

Searching for jobs online feels easy, but can be done much better by most job seekers.

Better searching for jobs online

Searching for jobs online is not hard to do – you simply find a good online job aggregator and enter your search terms. You’re likely to find a few job listings that appeal to you and start clicking and applying right away. But do you ever use the advanced search section? Do you ever set alerts to come to your inbox? Do you research and check to find out if your keywords are returning search results that do not include certain jobs you may love?

We’ll use Adzuna.co.za as an example of a website that lists many unique job adverts (over 100,000) and has strong search functionality. Let’s look at a few methods of improving your searches while on a job website, as well as how to automate the searching to save you time.

Using advanced search

Most job websites have an advanced search section (here is Adzuna’s). Here, you can get much more specific and only see those jobs in the search results that you really may be interested in. For example, if you are only keen on permanent roles, exclude the contract and temporary positions. You may find this reduces your search results to only 20 adverts, which is very manageable.

Use alerts

Also, setting alerts makes life a lot easier. Instead of clicking to the website daily (or even many times daily) to be the first to see new job postings, you can receive them in your inbox. Set numerous alerts at first and see which ones work best. Tweak or delete those that don’t. Set them to only send you an alert straight away if a new job comes up, not to send the same ones to you every morning. Within a week you’ll have an automated set of alerts delivering your searches to you instead of you having to do all the work.

Use different keywords

Google has a hard enough time knowing whether someone searching for “spirits” wants a bottle of whiskey or to find out more about ghosts. Similarly, check to see if perhaps you are only searching using keywords that certain advertisements don’t have in them. For example, do you only type in “java developer” or do you also try “java programmer” and “java engineer”? There may even be more keywords to watch out for, so you’d better add them to your alerts.

Hacking the URL

This is not something everyone needs to do, but sometimes you can change parts of the URL you are visiting online to effect searches that you cannot do on the website’s interface itself.

An example on Adzuna.co.za is only seeing the jobs that show a salary by editing the URL to https://www.adzuna.co.za/search?sf=0&si=&loc=111145. This sets the salary slider (usually in the left hand sidebar on the search results page) to “anything” instead of a range. As mentioned, this technique is not necessary for everyone to use.

Searching properly will save you time and get the right jobs in front of you as they come about. Even if you aren’t on the job market, you should still have some very tightly set alerts informing you of what is out there.

Don’t delay, start today!

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About the Author

Jesse Green
Online recruitment expert and journalist writing and having fun in cyberspace.

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The Interviewer

The Interviewer is the blog and resource center of Jesse Green, an online recruitment expert. Jesse has for the last 6 years worked for various companies, successfully founding and exiting a few digital and online ventures. His passion is in classifieds websites, specifically in job classifieds. Prior to that, he was a top recruitment consultant for many years.

Online recruitment and job seeker advice for individuals and corporates.